In the 21st century, data is becoming a key leverage point for large organizations to increase value, improve productivity and reduce costs. They are doing so by taking advantage of new technologies and new ways to organize themselves. In particular, they use data warehousing and data mart design to get to the next level.
While companies continue to improve their bottom lines through traditional tactics like reducing costs of raw materials and raising prices, those no longer are enough to get an organization to the next level. Instead, companies have to think differently about their processes and structure. They have to analyze the way they are delivering services and take advantage of every resource at their disposal. In particular, data is the most important new resource. Organizations take advantage of this resource by organizing their data effectively through technologies such as data warehousing and data mart design.
Data warehousing is an idea which describes subject-oriented, integrated, time-dependent, and permanent collection of information that companies separate from other information to help make specific decisions. For example, suppose that an organization is planning to build out a new piece of infrastructure like a loading dock to support its operations. The firm needs to understand its flow of commerce, its projected utilization rate and return on investment. Combining these metrics to create a coherent decision takes technical talent as well as a sound data warehousing strategy. The team would need to streamline the data sources into a single database that indicates a final decision on the investment. Data warehousing helps to efficiently manage huge teraflops of data and segment them into a single location.
Data warehousing collects information from different sources and consolidates it into a single, usable form of content. While having the data in hand is part of the process, if the decision makers cannot put it together then the data is useless. Data warehousing can create data thresholds at which a decision is clear because of the obvious benefits or drawbacks. In any case, data warehousing helps large organizations to better organize their overall data infrastructure.
Data Marts are one step up from data warehousing. They are more specific and designed to meet the needs of a particular business unit such as HR, Sales or Finance to help them get to a decision point. Rather than vacuum a whole universe of data as occurs in data warehousing, data mart design identifies a single vertical where much less data is needed to make a decision. That helps make the process much more efficient and costly.
Specifically, data marts "clean" data and reduce the overall carrying costs of information on servers. A data mart team may focus on reducing redundant data and removing unnecessary information. For example, a team may use a data mart to decide whether to hire additional sales people in a certain region of the country. They would analyze the potential market, the productivity of current sales people and the potential that the cost of the new person would outweigh the gains.
UniServ is one of the leading solutions for managing data including the two concepts mentioned above. In particular, it analyzes data quality and helps firms with data warehousing, data migration and data management. These solutions are seamlessly integrated across the entire back-end IT infrastructure. That reduces the stress and hassle for the IT team and ultimately reduces the cost and increases productivity for the firm. Uniserv's solutions are improved with customization but are effective "out of the box" for companies.
5x Technology provides IT solutions and consulting and services primarily in the areas of Business Intelligence, Data Management, Project Management and Custom Development. The firm helps clients take advantage of the dramatic leaps in software solutions for large organizations managing data over the last few years. For more information, please contact us. Our friendly consultants will provide feedback on some simple solutions we can provide to help you get additional value and productivity from your data systems.
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